WotC Mike Mearls: "D&D Is Uncool Again"

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In Mike Mearls' recent interview with Ben Riggs, he talks about how he feels that Dungeons & Dragons has had its moment, and is now uncool again. Mearls was one of the lead designers of D&D 5E and became the franchise's Creative Director in 2018. He worked at WotC until he was laid off in 2023. He is now EP of roleplaying games at Chaosium, the publisher of Call of Chulhu.

My theory is that when you look back at the OGL, the real impact of it is that it made D&D uncool again. D&D was cool, right? You had Joe Manganiello and people like that openly talking about playing D&D. D&D was something that was interesting, creative, fun, and different. And I think what the OGL did was take that concept—that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D&D brand because it's a roleplaying game, and I think those two things were sundered. And I don’t know if you can ever put them back together.

I think, essentially, it’s like that phrase: The Mandate of Heaven. I think fundamentally what happened was that Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven—and I don’t see them even trying to get it back.

What I find fascinating is that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that article. This is the same Charlie Hall who wrote glowing reviews of the 5.5 rulebooks. And then, at the same time, he’s now writing, "This is your chance because D&D seems to be stumbling." How do you square that? How do I go out and say, "Here are the two new Star Wars movies. They’re the best, the most amazing, the greatest Star Wars movies ever made. By the way, Star Wars has never been weaker. Now is the time for other sci-fi properties", like, to me that doesn’t make any sense! To me, it’s a context thing again.

Maybe this is the best Player’s Handbook ever written—but the vibes, the audience, the people playing these games—they don’t seem excited about it. We’re not seeing a groundswell of support and excitement. Where are the third-party products? That’s what I'd ask. Because that's what you’d think, "oh, there’s a gap", I mean remember before the OGL even came up, back when 3.0 launched, White Wolf had a monster book. There were multiple adventures at Gen Con. The license wasn’t even official yet, and there were already adventures showing up in stores. We're not seeing that, what’s ostensibly the new standard going forward? If anything, we’re seeing the opposite—creators are running in the opposite direction. I mean, that’s where I’m going.

And hey—to plug my Patreon—patreon.com/mikemearls (one word). This time last year, when I was looking at my post-Wizards options, I thought, "Well, maybe I could start doing 5E-compatible stuff." And now what I’m finding is…I just don’t want to. Like—it just seems boring. It’s like trying to start a hair metal band in 1992. Like—No, no, no. Everyone’s mopey and we're wearing flannel. It's Seattle and rain. It’s Nirvana now, man. It’s not like Poison. And that’s the vibe I get right now, yeah, Poison was still releasing albums in the ’90s. They were still selling hundreds of thousands or a million copies. But they didn’t have any of the energy. It's moved on. But what’s interesting to me is that roleplaying game culture is still there. And that’s what I find fascinating about gaming in general—especially TTRPGs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a period where TTRPGs were flourishing, and had a lot of energy and excitement around them, and D&D wasn’t on the upswing. Because I do think that’s what’s happening now. We’re in very strange waters where I think D&D is now uncool.
 

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I believe Mike overstates the impact of the OGL debacle. Does the average player really care (No, not really). I also don’t think D&D is “uncool” now. What we have is D&D fatigue.

i think the impact of the OGL on regular gamers was larger than people realize (I know I was hearing about it from gamers who aren't online much). But even if it didn't, it scared all the third party publishers and totally shattered the equilibrium that the OGL had achieved (and that matters because third party publishers were a huge part of keeping D&D in the position it was in: people forget I think how different things were before 3E, when every game had its own system, and the shelves weren't loaded with d20 material)
 

There are a lot of people who just buy and collect RPGs. I used to get emails from collectors all the time. Not saying that is the case here but it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of these kickstarter sales are people who just want to read the book for inspiration
I agree with this... the thing is it's great for sales for that company but it doesn't seem to really grow the player base, or diversify the hobby in a meaningful way.
 


One thing to keep in mind about the OGL is how it impacted specific parts of the ecosystem.

TTRPGs need GMs to run them. A news story might only reach 20% of your total audience, but if it reaches 75% of your DMs you're in deep trouble.

Compounding things, DMs tend to be far more tuned in than other players. Lose the DMs, and you lose your entire fanbase.
 

i think the impact of the OGL on regular gamers was larger than people realize (I know I was hearing about it from gamers who aren't online much). But even if it didn't, it scared all the third party publishers and totally shattered the equilibrium that the OGL had achieved (and that matters because third party publishers were a huge part of keeping D&D in the position it was in: people forget I think how different things were before 3E, when every game had its own system, and the shelves weren't loaded with d20 material)
To a degree that's true. But it still was the huge gorilla in the room before that. I remember game stores being chock full of AD&D 2E stuff in like, 97,98 and 99. And that was when TSR wasn't publishing much of anything.
 




So... here's my take. Grab your grain of salt:

The "Critical Role Bubble" hasn't burst. Neither has the COVID bubble. People who were introduced to D&D in 2019 and 2020 are still playing the game in massive quantities. Some are doing their own homebrew worlds at their own tables, some are playing with what Mercer has put out. And some are also branching out to other games and systems. (Pathfinder 2e, particularly)

Some have stopped playing, of course. That always happens. Whether through lack of interest or being in a place in their life where they simply can't game. But for the most part? They're still here.

And I say this with some confidence because Roll20 exists and releases user totals. Specifically: Active Users.

Prior to Q4 2020 they had less than 8 million users. Hitting 8 million was a big milestone. And they achieved it, largely, through the CritRole/Covid surge. By April of 2020, 300 million Americans were in lockdown and starting to go stir crazy within a couple months. Online D&D was an easy way to reach out using Zoom or Discord calls and Roll20 for a map.

So you'd think the userbase would dip a bit after the lockdown ended. Well... It didn't.

In Q4 2021 they had 10 million active users. In Q4 2024 they had 15 million active users. The growth of the userbase has certainly slowed down a bit since 2020, but the population isn't dropping.

I would provide the values for the Foundry VTT, if I could... but they don't publicly release them. I can tell you they had a 52% population growth, year over year, between 2021 and 2022. And a 32% increase on unique licenses from 2023 to 2024. Indicating there's been slowdown in their market growth as they approach saturation.

Now how many of those Foundry users continue to use the Foundry, year over year? No way to know.

One thing is certain between both Roll20 and Foundry, though: D&D remains the gorilla in the boxing ring.

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It might not be as publicly talked about as it was in 2020/2021, and forum activity might fluctuate... But it's still out there, being played, in massive numbers.

Now, your FLGS is probably going to continue to see a downturn in people present in the store. Some conventions might move to smaller facilities based on how many people are willing, and able to afford, the trip. But D&D isn't dying, any time soon.

In one month, the D&D24 PHB sold more copies than the 2014 PHB did before 2016. They printed out three times as many copies for launch day as the 2014 PHB and still wound up ordering a second printing as they ran out.


Mind you: Most FLGS that were contacted reported still having copies on the shelves except for two stores in Florida when this article was posted. This indicates that the majority of sales of the D&D24 PHB were sold online through retailers like Amazon, rather than conventional in-store purchases. Which is representative of a general cultural change we've seen in how people buy things that aren't groceries.

The Medium is changing. But the game is still being played.
 

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